Better Breakfast Series – Review: Sun In My Belly

The suggestion for this week’s entry into the Better Breakfast series comes from the Atlanta food blogger with arguably the best name ever: TheFoodAbides.

After looking into Sun In My Belly, a Café/Catering company housed in an old hardware store between Decatur and Kirkwood, I knew that I wanted to make a stop here. Their menu seemed to be right in line with the spirit of the Better Breakfast series. All of the breakfast items are classics at their core – cheese eggs and bacon, french toast, omelettes – but creativly gussied-up. The funny thing is that most of their menu isn’t actually breakfast items. Yet just reading about most of their other offerings still gave me a good ole’ fashioned foodierection.

I’ll have my chance to get to the lunch menu during my future visits, but this Saturday was all about the breakfast.

Word of warning to those that have never been here before and will rely on your GPS to find the place: look for an old building with a large red sign that says “hardware store” across the top. If you are looking for the words “sun in my belly” you had better have eagle-eye vision or you will drive right past it like I did.

I really liked the feel of this place. I don’t know if “trendy” is the word I’m looking for here or not. By all appearances SIMB appears to be a fairly normal young urban brunch spot. There is a lot of natural sunlight, a few fireplaces surrounded by couches for sipping coffee and discussing the reasons why Brooklyn is the most important city to American music in the last 50 years, and servers with plenty of thick rimmed glasses and patchy facial hair. But something about it just made me feel cool being there. Hmmmm….

Ohhhh…THAT’S the word I’m looking for! Hipster!

Before you start throwing your print outs of McSweeny’s at me, I mean no harm by pointing out SIMB’s hipsterish-ness. I happen to know and like many hipsters. But I’ll still call a spade a spade.

It was not very crowded this particular Saturday afternoon and we were seated immediately, but not before I wandered past the pastry section up front. I’m a sucker for a good cupcake (God bless my better-half, she makes a mean-ass cupcake) so I was naturally intrigued. I picked up a 5-pack of mini S’mores cupcakes for the road, but more on that later.

Even though my desire for originality was screaming at me to protest, I couldn’t help but feel overjoyed when my brunch date ordered the Kirkwood Breakfast, despite the fact that TFA covered that same dish on his blog. I’m sorry, but that shit looked amazing in his post, and he wasn’t the least bit wrong.

The Kirkwood

The Kirkwood is comprised of “softly scrambled” eggs with herbed boursin cheese folded into them, honey glazed bacon, and a buttermilk biscuit. These are some of the best scrambled eggs I have ever had. The texture is fantastic. They are extremely light and the creamy texture of boursin cheese, which is very similar to cream cheese and light in flavor, only adds to the wonderful pairing of the herbs and egg.

The honey glazed bacon is also worth mentioning, though it wasn’t all great. It sounded succelent in theory, so much so that I got some as a side with my food as well. And it was for the first few bites, but the bacon was too limp for my taste, borderline soggy, and a little too greasy. It literally left puddles of that orange flavored grease that you usually associate with microwaved pizza on the plate behind it. It was delicious as hell but, for me, it was a little to heavy to eat an entire serving of. And I don’t make a habit out of leaving uneaten bacon on a plate.

For my main course I went with the omelette of the day - The BBQ Omelette. I’m sorry to say that, for all but the lucky few, this probably won’t be on the menu when you eat here. But mass appeal be damned- It sounded too good to resist.

BBQ Omelette

The BBQ omelette was filled with BBQ pulled pork, red onions, tomatoes, and cheese (I think cheddar, but don’t quote me on that). The sweet BBQ flavor wasn’t overpowering at all. This was savory and extremely filling. This was also served with their Hashed Potatos. The potatos were good; they had a nice crisp to them and were mixed with chopped onions and peppers, but they were definitely taking a backseat to the pork stuffed egg-pocket-o-goodness I was devouring. I loved this dish…hopefully I will come to find that all of their daily omelette specials are this good.

I guess there is something to be said about lowered expectations because, based on the stereotypically angry Yelper reviews, as well as TFA himself, I had already braced myself for miserable service before arriving. But it actually wasn’t bad. Hopefully all of the negative press finally found its way up the food chain to management. There wasn’t much to say about it either way, really. It wasn’t great, but it was sufficient and wasn’t distracting from the food.

I saw a few plates of them whiz by en route to other tables and they looked fantastic.

All in all, I didn’t really have anything negative to say about my experience with Sun In My Belly. The only exception would be the aforementioned S’mores cupcakes. They were terrible…the cake was way too dry. I should have just gone with my gut and ordered the normal size instead because those were probably as moist and delicious as they looked. But this post isn’t about cupcakes.

Based on the majority of other reviews I have read, you might not have the same luck with the service that I did, but I can at least confidently put my stamp of approval on the food. In the meantime, I’m going to go shopping for ironic neon sunglasses, brush up on the last 6 months of Pitchfork, and get myself ready for another brunch at Sun In My Belly ASAP.

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[...] mid-morning, but as with most brunch spots in Atlanta, their wait can be pretty long on a weekend. Live to Feast and The Food Abides also have reviews of their meals at Sun in My Belly. I look forward to [...]